Month: December 2020

When Warner Bros announced plans to release their entire 2021 slate of films on HBO Max simultaneously with theaters, HBO Max skyrocketed out of relative obscurity to the very forefront of the streaming marketplace–with only one catch. The service was never made available for download on Roku devices, meaning Roku-users would be stuck watching these films on their computers, if at all. Not exactly ideal, especially when you’re trying to recreate a blockbuster experience in your living room.

Thankfully, a solution is on the way. HBO Max is being made available on Roku devices as of December 17. Users will be able to download the app from the Roku channel store and experience everything Max has to offer on their TVs or Roku-enabled devices.

The Roku app comes not a moment too soon as Wonder Woman 1984, the first of WB’s simultaneous theatrical/streaming release plans, is set to hit the service on December 25 at no additional cost to subscribers.

“We believe that all entertainment will be streamed and we are thrilled to partner with HBO Max to bring their incredible library of iconic entertainment brands and blockbuster slate of direct to streaming theatrical releases to the Roku households with more than 100 million people that have made Roku the No. 1 TV streaming platform in America,” stated Scott Rosenberg, Roku’s senior vice president of platform business “Reaching mutually beneficial agreements where Roku grows together with our partners is how we deliver an exceptional user experience at an incredible value for consumers and we are excited by the opportunity to deepen our longstanding relationship with the team at WarnerMedia.”

PS5 users will also be able to download the Roku app on their new gaming consoles, starting December 16, rounding out the HBO Max platform collection. It was made available on Amazon Fire devices earlier this year.

The HBO Max app will be available on Roku devices December 17.

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December continues to be a veritable jam-packed Advent calendar full of exciting new surprises for Star Wars fans. Tuesday saw the release of a new behind-the-scenes Empire Strikes Back reel, taking us back to when Star Wars wasn’t yet a sure thing. Earlier this month, at Disney Investor Day, 11 new projects set in the universe were announced. (This has been part of a bigger pattern stretching at least all the way back to November, when Baby Yoda and Mandalorian launched its own line of expensive jewelry.) Now, Disney has announced that on Christmas Day, Disney+ will be getting an hour long Mandalorian special titled Making of Season 2.

While the name pretty much gives it away, a release indicates that this special has “filmmakers and cast provide unprecedented access to the storytelling decisions and innovations that went into the second season.” The new special documentary is intended to “place viewers right in the middle of the filmmaking process… from early concept art through the groundbreaking technology introduced in the series.”

The Mandalorian, Disney+’s Star Wars space western created by Jon Favreau (The Wolf of Wall Street, 2019’s The Lion King) debuted on Disney+ in 2019. Season 2 began on October 30 of this year, and will be airing its season finale on December 18–a week before the newly announced special.

Earlier this year, long before Season 2 premiered, it was announced that Season 3 of The Mandalorian was already in pre-production. Given that The Mandalorian is getting not one but two spin-offs (Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka), it’s likely a safe bet to assume that the mothership series will not be ending anytime soon.

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If you’ve enjoyed having your brain teased by a video game in the last 20 years, or enjoyed the layered mechanical riddles of an IRL escape room, you have Myst to thank. Wildly popular when it launched in 1993, the narrative adventure was a pivotal moment for puzzle-solving in games. Now, 27 years later, the classic is reborn in virtual reality–rebuilt, but almost completely unchanged. Myst is and will always be a treasure. Even after all these years, its puzzles will still test, and maybe even stump, you. For returning fans, seeing it in VR for the first time is a powerful nostalgia trip. Being inside a world you’ve only seen through a screen before feels like diving into your own memory. When you get over that initial sense of wonder–or if you don’t have the nostalgia that conjures it–Myst can’t hide its age, and its VR makeover exacerbates its blemishes.

Myst is a small uninhabited island dotted with odd buildings and unintuitive, free-standing switches. When you arrive, you have no idea why you’re there or what you should be doing. As you poke around–opening every door, pressing all the switches, reading the books and notes you find–your situation starts to take shape. Trapped on Myst, you will need to unravel its puzzles to uncover its secrets and escape.

The content of Myst’s places and puzzles do not follow any kind of unifying aesthetic–they are united in service of creating perplexing challenges that require you to be mindful of your surroundings and think creatively. At a glance, each puzzle seems completely obtuse, a hodge-podge of interactive puzzle pieces that don’t easily fit together. More often than not, you’ll need to take a good long look at your surroundings and figure out how the puzzle works before you can solve it.

The first puzzle, explained in a note you find when you first arrive, sets the tone for the whole game: The note tells you to count the number of switches on the island, and enter that number into a machine to view a secret message. However, the switches have been placed adjacent to points of interest on the island, so they look as if they should be connected to other puzzles. Plus, switches are normally meant to be pulled. You would never figure out how to use them if not for the note. They unlock something, but they don’t do what you’d expect or work intuitively.

As far as I can tell, all the original puzzles remain intact, so returning players who remember what to do can fly through the game. If you want the game to keep you honest, though, there is a puzzle randomizer, which changes the symbol- and number-based answers. The randomizer doesn’t change how the puzzles are solved, but it forces you to go through all the steps without cutting corners.

Myst’s story is also a puzzle. Told in bits and pieces, learning the island’s history leads you to learn more about how you might escape. Like the puzzles, the information you’ll need doesn’t make itself obvious, so you have to pay close attention and keep information in mind as you go. In the 1990s, this was a game where you would need to write things down on a piece of paper. On the Quest, I found myself taking lots of screenshots, which takes a little longer but ultimately worked just as well.

Taking notes is just one aspect of Myst that feels archaic. Compared to modern puzzle and adventure games, Myst is an incredibly inconvenient game. Many of the puzzles require you to walk to one area to flip a switch, then go somewhere to check whether doing so led to the intended result. And, even with a scratchpad, there are a few puzzles that rely on your being a thorough investigator with a very good memory. Even as a fan of the original, inclined to forgive its faults, I recognize that it can become tedious checking your work and tinkering with puzzles, especially when you get stuck–doubly so when using VR-style “teleport” movement.

I played Myst on my Mac when I was a kid, but hadn’t touched it for many years. Even after decades away, though, when I found myself on the dock in the game’s opening moments, I recognized where I was. Though the game looks very different; the original’s pre-rendered visuals feel more vibrant and alive in 3D. Standing on the dock in VR, as opposed to simply seeing it on a screen, felt like a lucid dream. It felt like I was reliving a memory from my childhood. It had been long enough that I didn’t remember much about actually solving the puzzles, but I still recognized many of the spaces.

I knew them well enough to see that the environments are more realistic and detailed. If you look at the original ’90s versions, many of the environments had a craggy, geometric quality. In VR, the environments look smoother and more well-proportioned. In many places, the world is more detailed. You can see wood grain, rivets in pipes, and other small details. Though enhanced, the world hasn’t changed. This is just a more complete rendering of it.

Even without that emotional context, Myst is a simple game, with mechanics that translate well to a VR experience. Exploring every nook and cranny of the world is infinitely more captivating when you’re in it, as opposed to simply looking at it. Turning the knobs, pulling the levers, and flipping the switches feels more engaging than merely pointing and clicking. Like many VR games, you can switch between two movement controls: using the analog to move and “teleport” movement, where you hold and release the left analog stick to resituate yourself. You can also walk around your immediate surroundings if you have the free space to set up room-scale tracking. Room-scale can’t replace the other methods, but using room-scale in puzzle rooms really enhances the sensation that you’re in the space.

At the same time, VR, and the Oculus Quest specifically, impose some technical limitations. While the new art successfully realizes a more detailed version of Myst, the visual fidelity of the new version leaves something to be desired. Many objects have ragged, pixelated edges. Text, particularly when it’s supposed to be hand-written, is blurry and hard to read, though I never encountered anything I couldn’t read outright.

In general, the Quest version of Myst is also technically shaky at launch. In just over six hours, I encountered multiple bugs that killed my save without crashing the game. In one instance, when I teleported into a wall, the impact was obvious. In another, where a puzzle didn’t reset properly, I moved on and completed whole sections of the game before realizing there was a problem. The auto-save feature tracks you down to the second, so saving manually is important. Some things never change, I guess.

If you’re like me and have some reverence for Myst from a bygone age, you can forgive the technical flaws. Getting to not only return to the game, but see it in VR, was a surreal, heartwarming experience. And it was heartening to find that, even years later, it still has teeth. Newcomers may find it a tough hang between its unforgiving old-school adventure game tendencies and some technical issues, but it’s still an impressive brain-teaser and a neat cultural artifact.

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Wonder Woman 1984, aka WW84, is the sequel to 2017’s Wonder Woman and the latest entry in the DCEU. The first movie was a refreshing addition to the DC Universe, and was well received by critics and fans. But Wonder Woman 1984 arrives very much in the tradition of the first film: earnestly celebratory, a blast to watch, and sorely needed.

WW84 picks up almost 70 years after its predecessor and finds Diana (Gal Gadot) living a reclusive life in Washington, DC. Joining the cast of characters this time are Barbara (Kristen Wiig), a new hire at the museum, and Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), a skeezy TV personality running a Ponzi scheme. And yes, we somehow get the return of Chris Pine’s character Steve Trevor.

Check out Mike’s review in the video above, as he explains why Wonder Woman 1984 is the perfect movie for this moment in time. And for the full score, read Mike’s review on GameSpot.

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